


Take Five

by carriecmoney



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, M/M, Smoking, Swing Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 07:47:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3602034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carriecmoney/pseuds/carriecmoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco laughed, scratching the back of his head. “Is this your way of askin’ me to dance, Kirschstein?”</p><p>Jean grinned, cigarette caught in his teeth. “Is that your way of sayin’ you ain’t gonna do it?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Five

The Yorktown-class carrier _USS Enterprise_ had been out of port for a month now, cruising the Pacific wasteland in search of painted sunlight to rip holes in for the glory of the country. She was her own hive of activity at all hours, a floating colony with literal thousands of people caught in her gigantic steel trap, bugs in the jar of her veins. She exhaled gasoline and ammunition, the hundred-plus planes that littered her surface hopping off and on like fleas.

At least the pilots got to leave.

It was another pink dawn after a long patrol in their A-20 night fighter when Sergeants Kirschstein, pilot, and Bodt, gunner, crawled out of their cockpits, sore and chapped. They leant on each other as they crossed the flight deck with their squadron to go below to the mess. A month alone together in the sky, chattering the chills away above the dappled cloud cover, had laced them tighter than their standard-issue boots.

There was a record on the player in the corner of the mess when they climbed through the hatch, the music too energetic for both shifts wading in for dinner/breakfast, but too pleasant after hours of radio static and engine roar to take it off. Bodt swayed at Kirschstein’s side, eyes closed, purple circles under them. Kirschstein huffed, too tired to laugh, and held him steady by the elbow. “Easy, Marco, don’t rock the boat.”

“Oh, please. It’d take a lot more than me to tip us over.” But he stopped. “Oh, but I could be _in_ the water again.” He draped himself over Kirschstein’s shoulders. “Jean, let’s go surfing.”

Jean laughed and heaved him off, ears hot under his leather helmet. “Not right now we ain’t, you’re barely keepin’ your eyes open.” They shuffled through the mess line for the same stale eggs and toast as always, then found an empty spot at the end of a packed table by the bulkhead. Jean squeezed himself between a cold steel brace and a burning Marco. “I ain’t never gonna get why you love the beach so much, it’s fuckin’ awful.”

Marco cut his eyes at him. “I can’t believe that you have been to _my island_ and still think that.” He spread jelly on his toast. “When we get back, I’m re-educating you on the ocean.”

Jean smiled, pressed to Marco from knee to hip. “Only if you come home with me to my mountains after.” Marco rolled his eyes, but didn’t stir up their old argument for the fourth time that day. Night. Shift.

They fell silent, the rest of the squadron nodding off into their greasy eggs around them as the day crew nursed their coffee. Jean and Marco hadn’t made too many friends since they boarded the _Enterprise_ , keeping mostly to themselves when there wasn’t a fight to be had. It was easy to disappear in these companionways.

The record in the corner ran out, and someone in reaching distance flipped it and reset the needle. Marco smiled around the lip of his orange juice cup.

“I know this song.” He tapped his foot to the rhythm, jostling Jean’s leg. “Maria used to make me go dancing with her so our parents wouldn’t raise hell, but she’d always find me out for this one.” He smiled, head tilted on his right palm, left one banging out the beat with his fork. “Said I was the only one who’d get her ‘round the world without her skirt flipping up.”

Jean grinned. “Marco! You’ve been holdin’ out on me! You _swing_?”

“Not a lot, just when she made me. I wasn’t bad at it, though.” He slit his eyes open to squint at Jean. “Bet I could get _you_ around the world without your skirts flippin’ up.”

Jean blinked. “I ain’t _that_ skinny!”

“Maybe you didn’t _used_ to be.” Marco slung his arm over Jean’s shoulders. “Look at you, now, you’re all skin and bones.”

Jean shoved him off and into the sailor crammed on Marco’s other side, who grunted as he almost spilled his coffee and gave them a dirty look. Marco chuckled, eyes crinkling. Jean hunched his shoulders up and frowned at his eggs.

Food gave them a second (or third) wind, winding them up enough that the idea of their cabin made Jean’s skin itch. Marco followed him without a question past the residential companionway, down a ladder, and through the shifting lanes of a storage room to a lonely porthole set deep in the hull. Jean dug for their stashed cigarettes behind a crate of canned beans while Marco sprawled out on the deck, head on a sack of onions, flipping the flame on his lighter. Jean tossed him a cigarette that Marco caught with one hand, not looking away from his fire. Showoff. He lit it and held out the lighter to Jean, fingers brushing on the exchange. Jean sat down next to Marco so he didn’t have to look into the sun and stared out the porthole at the ellipse of rising light.

Talking was easier up in their bird. When they couldn’t see each other, back to back across twenty yards of steel and engine fumes, ghosts over the thousand-foot waves, it was as close as it got to talking to yourself. Here, now, inches away from Marco’s body heat, words would swell in Jean’s throat and break his thoughts up. They always smoked in silence.

Almost. “You really think you could swing me?”

“Heck yeah.” Marco blew out a soft trail of smoke, embers scattering from his cigarette (the first one Jean had given him, he’d half wasted coughing until Jean coached him through it). “I can see your _ribs_ , boy.”

“Prove it.”

Marco shot him a look. “Lift up your shirt and see for yourself.”

Jean elbowed his shoulder. “Not _that_ part, fucker.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “Lift me.”

Marco laughed, scratching the back of his head. “Is this your way of askin’ me to dance, Kirschstein?”

Jean grinned, cigarette caught in his teeth. “Is that your way of sayin’ you ain’t gonna do it?”

Marco wrinkled his nose, squinting at the shadow maze of the pipes overhead, holding his cigarette to the side so the ashes didn’t fall on his flight suit. “I’d kinda promised myself my next dance would be with Maria.” Jean’s heart shrank as he sighed, but Marco took the last pull from his cigarette and stubbed it out, standing and holding out a hand to Jean. “But I don’t think she’d mind this one break in form.” Jean blinked at him before he scrambled to his own feet, not even finishing his cigarette before flicking the butt away and letting Marco take his hands. Marco bit his lip, swinging Jean’s hands between them as he stared at their feet.  “It’s easier with music and all.”

“We can make do.” Jean kicked out a beat with his heel on the deck, metal echoes pounding the bass. Marco laughed and joined in, whistling the brass of the mess’s record as his hand swinging picked up into actual direction, Jean-

“Stop _leading_ , Kirschstein, for once that’s my job!” Jean grinned and ducked his head – he’d need to get a buzz soon, his hair was poking from the front of his helmet – and relented, following Marco’s tugs like his pilot’s gut. Which had Marco’s voice in his head. Marco hummed, keeping eye contact with the goggles on top of Jean’s helmet.

They had a tiny opening in the space between boxes, nothing like the hardwood square of a real dance floor, but Marco managed to twirl Jean under his arm, a laugh interrupting the humming. Jean grinned back, ears red and thrumming, his heartbeat the bassline in his breastbone. Marco grabbed his waist, arm heavy over Jean’s layers. Jean’s hand clutched Marco’s shoulder as he was spun in a tight circle, rubber soles squeaking. Jean picked up the hum when Marco laughed too hard, Marco’s forehead knocking on Jean’s shoulder, leather and soft hair brushing their cheeks.

“This is silly,” Marco said even as his feet kept moving. Jean laughed and squeezed his shoulder.

“Ain’t you gonna show me what you can do?”

Marco spun him, fast and dizzy, beaming right in Jean’s face. “Is that a challenge, shortstop?”

Jean flicked Marco’s collar, hot under his own. “You know it.”

Marco spun him out, heels banging on a crate, only connected by a hand. Snapped him back in, tapping the beat on Jean’s waist as his arm wrapped tighter. “Hold on.”

Marco dipped him to one side, Jean’s feet leaving the ground, swung him around and over, room spinning around Jean as he went over Marco’s back feet-first, landing with a jolt. Marco laughed as he stumbled, catching him with both arms around his waist to cinch him close. Jean closed his eyes, dizzy, holding onto Marco’s neck for support.

“Told ya.”

Jean’s eyes popped open to find Marco’s face only inches from his. “I shoulda just believed ya,” he breathed, panting a little. He’d gotten the wind kicked right out of him, stomach heaving against Marco’s.

Marco flicked his gaze down to his parted lips.

Marco dropped him like a hot brick, backing up until he bumped into a tower of salt crates. “Well, yeah, so, there you go.” Jean blinked, hands heavy at his sides, still dizzy. Marco rubbed his nose and looked away. “Come on, I’m beat as a dog, let’s go hit the sack, yeah?”

Jean’s fists clenched. He shoved them in his pockets. “Sure, Bodt.”

* * *

A year later, Flight Officer Kirschstein stands on a black sand beach and tosses a sunrise lei into the ocean.

 

**Author's Note:**

> {A/N: WHO HATES ME?? HELL YEAH [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/carriecmoney) [tumblr](http://carriecmoney.tumblr.com)}


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